Lazy, Pampered Chickens

O Christmas Tree

The only shopping we do the day after Thanksgiving is for our Christmas tree. No matter the weather, which was really cold this year, we're out there looking for a tree. Here's the one we got this year. (Those bare dead branches at the top are from some tree behind it.)

I usually like our trees a little more "Charlie Brown-y" than this one. This tree is quite a bit more high-brow than we usually get. But it's very pretty and one of these days I'll post pictures of it decorated.

Apparently Rafe thought jumping on Matt's back while he was sawing it down would be helpful.

One year when our Christmas budget was a little tight, we decided to cut down a cedar tree from my parents' pasture. Our first mistake was walking around in the woods on opening day of deer season. We cut the top off a rather large tree. When we got it home and got it in the house we discovered that, laying on the floor, it took up the length of our dining room. About 14 feet. We had to trim it a bit :) But that was one memorable Christmas tree.

'Tis the Season

In the wake of "Black Friday" I feel like ranting about materialism and excess. Instead I'll simply share with you this quote gleaned from Worldchanging:

Voluntary simplicity involves both inner and outer condition. It means singleness of purpose, sincerity and honesty within, as well as avoidance of exterior clutter, of many possessions irrelevant to the chief purpose of life. It means an ordering and guiding of our energy and our desires, a partial restraint in some directions in order to secure greater abudance of life in other directions. It involves a deliberate organization of life for a purpose.

We had a lovely Thanksgiving Day. Time spent with Matt and the kids, my grandma, my parents, my brother and his family, and family friends. A Thanksgiving dinner that included chicken and sweet potatoes from our farm.

We also celebrated my birthday, which is coming up this week. It was one of the nicest birthdays I've had. Simple gifts - a cookbook, a couple of Christmas movies, some scrapbooking supplies. We took the kids to the 5:00 showing of "Chicken Little" at the Watts Theater - check out the pricing :) - and then back to my parents' house for cake and ice cream.

Simple. Lovely.

Thankful

Olivia got in trouble Wednesday night and sent to her room. (And to be fair, the other 2 got in trouble and sent to their rooms as well.) A little while later she came out and handed this to me. Yes, the girl knows how to get herself out of trouble :)

I am thankful for all of you who read this little blog of mine, all of you who leave comments and all of you who don't, and all of you who take the time out of your day to send me an email. Your encouragement touches me. Happy Thanksgiving!

7 Days Without Blogging

makes one week. Ha, old joke, I know.

The cold weather has settled in for good it seems, and I've not been out and about the farm much to snap any new pictures. Not a lot to take pictures of, either. Everyone is hunkered down for the winter. After work I run out and gather eggs and get back into the warm house as quickly as possible. On really cold days I'm hauling warm water from the house out to the chicken coop and picking up eggs before they freeze, sometimes three times a day.

Out of almost 50 hens I'm getting only between 4 and 8 eggs a day. On Sunday we spent most of the day sprucing up the chicken coop, thinking this would entice the girls into laying inside the coop. We got the nest boxes cleaned out and rebedded, set up more feeders and an additional waterer. Got a light hung that will turn on/off on a timer. The walls of the coop don't reach all the way to the roof, so we created a ceiling for the room by stretching tarp across the top. This will help keep the room warmer, as well as keep the hens from escaping when we want them to stay in. We also built new perches that will accomodate all 50 birds.

The best part is we did all of this without having to buy anything. One tarp was leftover from the broiler pen this summer, and we cut another piece of tarp out of a hay tarp that got ruined in a windstorm. The lumber for the perches was cut from some homesawn we'd never used.

Then on Monday night Matt was able to catch all but 8 hens and shut them in the coop. The plan was to shut them in all day Tuesday and Wednesday morning, have eggs coming out our ears, and let them out at noon today. But yesterday's grand egg total? 8. So we'll leave them in a little longer. They don't seem to mind, anyway. It's like a Hen Hilton in there.

So now we get busy with indoor chores. I'll take my time and work at fall cleaning all winter. I never did finish washing the windows. We had such a warm fall and late frost that it took forever for the asian beetles and flies to disappear. So windows will wait until spring. I've been working on Christmas gifts. Poring over seed catalogs and making lists of things to grow next year. Working on the farm recordkeeping. I enjoy the change in activity this time of year, and about the time I get tired of it spring will be here and we'll be back outside again.

Before and After

It's too cold to go out and snap many pictures today, so I thought I'd show a before and after of our old farmhouse. We aren't sure exactly when it was built. One source says 1875. The carpenter that put the new basement under it for us thought it wasn't quite that old, maybe around 1900. This farm was the first land claim made in Mitchell County in 1851. A log cabin sat somewhere on this site prior to this house being built.

This was the house when we moved in 8 years ago:


And this is the house after new siding and new porch this summer:


I love love love the new front porch. We didn't get done in time to use it much this year but next year I'll be out there in a porch swing, a book in one hand and a drink in the other, watching the kids play and the livestock graze, and waving at the neighbors as they drive by.

Closeup of the porch. Before there were 2 porches, one over each door. We extended the main porch so it wraps around the bay window to both doors. Matt painted the ceiling a turquoise-y robins egg blue.


Our new front entrance. We've got a lot of painting to do next summer.


The old front entrance looked like this.

Doin' a "little" raking

Rafe had his little hayrake hooked up to his big pedal tractor this weekend. It cracked us all up. Love to see his imagination at work. I asked if he was raking hay but he said, "No, I'm raking snow! There's snow all over the place!"

Matt had Veterans Day off work, and the kids had it off school, so I took the day off, too. We took an overnight trip to The Great Serengeti Indoor Waterpark at Owatonna, Minnesota. The girls have worked so hard this year helping us on the farm - and in the house - that we wanted to reward them with something fun. It was fun, highly recommended to any of you within driving distance of Owatonna.

One Chicken's Mess

is a little boy's playground



Rafe spends hours scooping up and hauling around spilled chicken feed.

Expansion

My dad was nice enough to bring his tractor and soil saver over on Sunday to widen the garden for next year. This past summer I discovered the joys of growing drying beans. I grew soldier beans, which are white with a burgundy spot in the middle. Drying beans come in so many fun colors I wanted room to plant a number of varieties. I also want to start growing herbs.

So we had Dad bring the edge of the garden to a lawn mowers-width from the edge of the new fence we're building. The fence will create a big area in the backyard for the dogs to run free. This is mainly for Ike's benefit. Abbie stays put, but Pyrenees believe that whatever land they can see is theirs to guard. Unfortunately one of our neighbors does not appreciate this gesture, so we have to keep him tied up or in the house. I can't wait until we don't have to tie him anymore!

Bales in the Mist

For some reason, fields of cornstalk bales as far as the eye can see are just eerie to me. Maybe it's because they're made in the fall, when everything is stark and gray and damp. They are the last product of the fields before winter drops her snowy blanket over the land.

Hay bales made in the summer are happy, green, warm, bright things.

This field belongs to another farmer, one who doesn't have livestock. So he agreed to let us and one of our neighbors make bales from his stalks. We got 75 bales between the two of us.

Cornstalk bales are much cheaper than hay - $15 versus $40. We use them for bedding and also feed them to the cows and bull, along with grass hay. They get the nutrition they need from the hay, and extra energy (to keep warm) from the cornstalks. The calves that we feed out to sell get the good alfalfa hay and corn.

And here's a picture of the corn coming out just over a week ago. Nothing eerie about this.

As promised on Friday, I'm posting pictures from our trip to a local farm to buy pumpkins.

First a ride out to the field, in a wagon pulled by a couple of Howard & Mable's draft horses.



Then back to the yard to ride the cornstalk horse.

Post-Halloween Pumpkin Clearance Sale

A couple of weekends ago we took the kids to Howard and Mable's, a local farm with a giant pumpkin patch. They drive you out to the field in a wagon pulled by a couple of their beautiful Belgian draft horses. They sell pumpkins, squash, gourds, broom corn and Indian corn. Later this weekend I'll post some pictures from that outing.

So Matt got to talking with Howard, and I'm not sure whose idea it was, but the result was that after Halloween we ended up with 2 wagon loads full of pumpkins for free.



We throw several to the livestock each day, more as a treat than a meal. The pigs and chickens go crazy over them. The cows wouldn't eat them at first, but now they'll munch on them if we give them the very soft pumpkins. They eat the seeds and pulp, then Matt takes the pitchfork and pitches out the rinds when they're done. They should compost nicely.

Pumpkin seeds are supposed to be a natural wormer, although I think they're more effective if ground or chopped rather than eaten whole. Of course my dad and my brother think this is bunk and are having a good laugh at my expense. Story of my life.